COBOL - INITIALIZE

In a COBOL INITIALIZE statement, elementary FILLER items are ignored. That means, INITIALIZE does not touch the values in the FILLER.

e.g.,

01 WS-VAR.
05 FILLER PIC X(5) VALUE 'junk1'.
05 WS-FILLER PIC X(5) VALUE 'junk2'.
05 FILLER PIC X(5) VALUE 'junk3'.

After the statement INITIALIZE WS-VAR is executed, FILLER contains 'junk' ,whereas WS-FILLER contains all spaces.

Effectively, WS-VAR changes from 'junk1junk2junk3' to 'junk1 junk3'.